


to be better

by wjjmwmsn5



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Minor James "Rhodey" Rhodes/Tony Stark, Trans Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 21:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wjjmwmsn5/pseuds/wjjmwmsn5
Summary: Peter comes across some bad guys that are out of his league and calls for Tony. Everything spirals.





	to be better

**Author's Note:**

> i am so. so very unhappy with this one. but i cna't think of a way to make it better aside from rewritign entirely so sjdflksjdf here we go  
> requested by anon on tumblr. my url is transpeterparkers  
> let me know if you liked it!! it means a lot

**** Peter didn’t know if Flash was ever going to stop with the transphobic comments. If it wasn’t him, it was someone else who spread it around with just as much vigor, inspired by the “Penis Parker” taunts that he had been popularized at the school. He was tired and irritable when he left school that day, eager to get into the Spider-Man suit. He slipped out and into an alley like usual, stripping from his school clothes and jumping into the spidey suit. 

He hid his backpack back behind a trashcan and webbed it up just in case, and then he pulled himself up into the air with a web, feeling the ground disappear from underneath him and the air open up to a much more tolerable space. Up here, everyone called him Spider- _ Man _ . But today, where normally this might have alleviated at least a little of his mood, he still felt grounded to everything that they said to him at school. He wasn’t able to forget being Peter for this moment. 

He felt a shiver go down the back of his spine as he swung near an abandoned building. Frowning, he dangled across the street and looked over at the rundown building that felt off. He lowered himself to the ground and crossed the street, standing at the doorway and listening closely. 

“Karen, advanced reconnaissance mode,” he whispered. He put his ear close to the door of the building, and inside he heard some sort of shouting—which wasn’t necessarily spidey business, because people fought all the time, but then he definitely heard a scream from somewhere inside. 

Maybe bursting into an abandoned building alone wasn’t a good idea, but he wrenched the door open as quietly as he could—although, with pulling a door open, exactly how quiet could you be?—and slipped inside. Thankfully there was no one in the opening lobby area of the empty apartment building. He could hear some of the shouting from upstairs clearer now without his suit, so he whispered for Karen to stop enhancing the sound for him. And none too soon, because there was another scream from upstairs that he was sure would have sounded like accidentally turning his music on in his earphones for it to be at full, deafening volume. 

As he started toward the stairway, he heard at least three sets of angry voices upstairs. He paused at the base, considering what he should do, before deciding to go up. The only other voice was the distressed person who was screaming, so if there were just three of them, he was sure he could handle it—he had almost handled everyone at the ATM robbery well, and that was with fancy weapons. 

Once he was at the top of the stairs, he peaked into the room that the talking was coming from, and saw not three but five people standing in there, all of them with guns at their hips or in their hands and one of them with a big knife in their grasp. 

While he was ducked down, trying to assess the situation and what he should do, if he could handle all five of them while still protecting the screaming person, one of them seemed to catch a glimpse of him. They started toward the hallway and he tried to swing over the railing to hang down where the person wouldn’t see him, but a red suit, even in the dark of the abandoned building, was noticeable.

“What the fuck?” the person said, storming out a lot quicker as a couple of the others followed. “I think that spider fuck is here.”

“Spider fuck? Really?” Peter said as he jumped back up into plain view, shooting a web out first to the gun on their hip so they couldn’t grab it quickly, and then rapidly sending enough webbing their way to pin them back against the wall. “Not cool. It’s not even that hard.  _ Spider-Man. _ ” He let out an exasperated huff. 

Two of the remaining four came out, their guns now in hand. Peter felt the shiver run down his spine again before he heard the sound of a gunshot, and jumped up to the ceiling to avoid the bullet whizzing toward him. “Karen, call Mr. Stark!” he said, hopping out of the way of another bullet as the other shot toward him on the ceiling. He shot out at them, but without looking, it just barely webbed up the legs of the one on the right—a cumbersome disadvantage but not a fight-ending one.

The phone rang for too long, and in that time Peter mostly danced on the ceiling to avoid the bullets flying at him, while several curses were slung at him by the criminals as rapid-fire as he was attempting to swing webs at them. There was nothing around in the empty hallway to use to his advantage. 

“What—” Mr. Stark’s voice was cut off by the sound of another gunshot, and the next time he spoke, he sounded distinctly more panicked. “What the fuck was that!”

“You need to—” He leaped down to the bannister to try to crawl where they couldn’t shoot at him or where they would have a harder time. “—track me and—” He dropped down underneath the staircase, knowing that they would follow him down but buying himself a moment of time. “—help!” 

“I’m coming,” Tony said before Peter even had time to finish the last word, hanging up.

All Peter had to do was stall until Tony got there. And then he had to endure the lecture that was coming up.

Maybe he could even take another one or two of them out before Tony got there, but he wasn’t going to be risky. He was in a bad mood, but not so much that he was going to make stupid decisions. 

He heard the footsteps clearly coming down the stairs as he felt his breathing quicken, slower than they would be because of the webbing at one of their legs. Fear made the sound of their running, especially with his enhanced senses, sound like a stampede of elephants. It was suffocating and nearly impossible to think of his next move, what he was going to do when they reached him.

He steadied his breath and shut his eyes for a moment, let the sound of their footfalls return to normal, and when he opened his eyes again, he didn’t have time to think. He slung webs out to grab at the guns they were holding pointed at him. The others were coming now, and all of them were shouting at him, shouting at each other, but none of the words were processing. 

_ Tony, please hurry. Please hurry. Please hurry. _

He sent a web grenade out by them, hoping to quickly incapacitate the two of them so he could deal with the other two. It only webbed up one of them, as the other moved before it went off, hands trapped together but gun not totally out of play. 

“Wow, I am not on my game tonight,” he muttered. “Why did all of you have to do crime today of all days? It’s really inconvenient.”

He didn’t really care what they said back; he just needed to speak.

But something cut through all the noise: “You fight like a girl. Why don’t you man up and hit anyone, Spider-Fuck?”

That cut through him, sliced at him better than a knife. Why couldn’t he escape it anywhere, even if the criminal didn’t know he was trans? Why did it all just have to pile up at once?

He couldn’t even fight to prove himself if he wanted to—there was no way he was going to hit a regular human, not with all the strength the spider bite had given him. He didn’t trust his punches not to kill. 

The two came downstairs, one of them holding a purple fancy weapon like the kind that Liz’s dad had been selling.

“Aw, come on,” Peter said, but there was no enthusiasm in his words. “Why does everyone have those?”

The one with the fancy gun fired out at Peter, who dodged out of the way as a purple beam came in and cut a gash in the wall. He looked at it for a moment, perhaps too long, remembering everything he went through with the man who started making weapons like those. 

He was pushed quickly out of his daze by another gunshot of the normal variety. He ducked out of the way quickly, but someone else shot at him and he couldn’t keep up. He cried out as a bullet grazed his arm, the searing pain pulling him even further from the situation than he was already drifting. 

Everything felt a little distant and muted. The noises around him weren’t really there, but rather they seemed to be coming from another room. He didn’t like it. He felt like there was something wrapped around his head, and he wanted more than anything to tug his mask off, as if that was the reason for this. 

When next he looked up, there was a gun pointed at him, and then there wasn’t. A flash of bright light announced Tony’s arrival as he shot the person about to fire at him away. Peter collapsed backwards, a hand over where the bullet had hit his arm, and watched like it was a slow motion scene in a movie as Tony dealt with the remaining three of them, all caught off guard by his sudden arrival. 

When all of them were on the ground, Peter pointed upstairs with his good arm, hearing his voice from a thousand miles away as he said, “Someone upstairs.” 

Tony disappeared and Peter looked at the people unconscious on the ground. He didn’t like the suit being on him. He didn’t like how close it was to his skin. He wanted to be wearing a big sweatshirts, or one of Ned’s t-shirts that he had all but stolen from him at this point. His shoulder felt less important than how confined in his skin he felt. 

He was in pain, he was upset, he had been misgendered, and he had just in general had a bad day. He was shaking now, too. 

Tony came down carrying a man who had gone unconscious himself. “Are you okay?” he asked him, setting the person down and quickly coming over to Peter. The mask of the Iron Man suit lifted so Peter could see his face. “Did they shoot you? Are you hurt?” There was so much urgency in his voice that it almost annoyed Peter; he wanted everything to stay in slow motion until he could think straight. 

“I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head. “Something— grazed me, that’s all.” 

Tony looked at his arm as Peter gestured to it and seemed satisfied that it wasn’t serious. “Are you okay?”

Peter, drifting somewhere between the line of halfway out of this world and completely in it still, knew that he had panicked because of the fancy gun, the bullet that hit him, the comment about him fighting like a girl. He was okay, but he just wanted to get home and get the suit off. He wanted to clean his arm before May saw it and got worried. He wanted to call Ned and MJ and listen to them talk so he didn’t have to think. 

“I’m fine,” he told him again. 

Tony frowned at him and sat back. “I can see that you’re not, kid.”

“Well, I am.” Peter stood up, looking up at Tony as he stood as well. “I’m fine. I just want to go home.” 

Tony paused for a moment, his eyes on Peter’s arm and then hesitating at his face. He didn’t want to see all the concern on there. He didn’t like worrying people. “Do you want me to fly you home?”

“No,” he told him shortly.

“Are you sure? Your arm—”

“I can get home, Mr. Stark.”

He was so annoyed. He was annoyed with how much his arm still hurt, and how much fear was still caught in his chest, and how he froze. Maybe he could have actually dealt with these people on his own, but he choked. He didn’t do what he needed to do. He nearly got himself seriously hurt, because he wasn’t reacting quickly enough, thinking sharply enough. He was letting what people said to him throughout the day as Peter cloud his judgment as Spider-Man, and he knew he couldn’t do that.

And he kept thinking about what May and Tony and Ned and MJ would think if he got hurt, and he was so annoyed that he almost hurt them like that. 

He just didn’t want to talk to them. He didn’t want to open up. He didn’t want to let the words flow out of his mouth. He didn’t want to risk breaking down. He just wanted to go home. 

Tony looked hurt, more hurt than Peter had intended—seeing as he hadn’t truly intended any hurt—and he felt even more annoyed with himself. He didn’t want to be there anymore. 

“Let me know how the person is.” He walked toward the door, and as he walked out, he heard Tony’s footsteps as he went to collect the hostage they had saved. 

There was a moment as he started swinging away that he considered turning back around and telling Tony why he was so upset. But then he remembered that he didn’t even know if Tony was cool with trans people. He was almost certain he was, but that last little bit between that almost, that bit that prevented it from being really, truly certain, scared him. What if he told him and he was never able to look at Peter the same? What if he told him and he started treating him differently? He couldn’t deal with that, and he couldn’t talk to him about what was getting to him.

He tried not to think as he went home, but it was hard not to see how hurt Tony was, and it was even harder not to imagine May’s face if he didn’t hide the wound on his arm well enough. 

…

A week later, it seemed that all hell had broken loose: Peter stumbled across a larger group of people, all of whom were carrying weapons not quite like the ones that Liz’s dad had made, but all of them extremely high tech. He knew right away that it was more than he could handle, and whenever he made that decision, his first instinct was to call Tony. 

They were further out than he normally went, out in an area empty of buildings and scattered with trees. There were two groups of them, arguing and threatening each other, and Peter knew it wasn’t too long before fighting broke out among them—fighting that would undoubtedly lead to casualty. He hid a little bit away, listening and watching with advanced reconnaissance mode, as Karen called Tony. 

The phone picked up eventually, Tony’s face appearing in the corner of his vision. “Hey, kid, what’s up?” he asked. The two of them hadn’t talked at all in that week since Peter snapped at him, except when Tony texted to ask how things were going. Peter felt bad, but he didn’t know how to apologize, and he didn’t know how to explain things without coming out. Maybe he could have found a way if he had asked someone, but he knew the way that he had treated Tony was shitty and he didn’t want to talk about it. 

“Lots of people,” he whispered, sure that they wouldn’t hear him from this distance but still worried. “They have really high tech weapons—why can’t anybody just live with normal guns anymore? I need you to hurry.” He was talking quickly, knowing that the situation escalated with every word out of the criminals’ mouths. 

Sometimes he wanted something big to happen to him again, and sometimes he thought about how satisfied he would be with just a couple simple store robberies, maybe a casual break-in. Things like a group of scary people with scary guns standing out in a scary location was just a little too over his head on certain nights. 

“I’ll be there,” Tony said.

Peter knew that there were times when he took the tracker in his suit for granted, when he only thought of the infringement of any trust to be had between the two of them, but in times like these, he remembered that the tracker was actually the only thing keeping him from being trapped in a bad situation with less time to get Tony there to help him than what he needed. As he stood watching the scene unfold, Tony having hung up, he knew that it would be a few minutes before Tony arrived, but he was sure that they had that amount of time. 

He heard lots of  _ uncouth  _ phrases, such as “You sons of bitches,” “Watch as your lackeys scrape your guts off the ground,” and—Peter’s favorite—“You nasty little thieving jack-shit-asses.” 

He felt like he was in a movie, a real superhero movie, which was, you know,  _ really cool.  _ But also really concerning, because he didn’t know if he was ready to flip out and actually be in a superhero movie when Tony arrived.

But he would be. He would be ready, because even these people were obviously bad people, they didn’t need to kill or maim each other. And he certainly didn’t want any of them out in the streets, where they could hurt others. 

Tony crept in behind him soon, startling him when he put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. He jumped up and clung to the tree about three feet in the air, looking at Iron Man staring at him. They weren’t very far from the group, so the slightest noise could alert them to their presence, and it would be hard to hide Iron Man. 

“I think you should stay back,” Tony whispered to him. “I should have asked you how many people were here. I’m sending for Rhodey.”

“I can help,” Peter insisted, knowing that if Tony was worried, he shouldn’t be going in alone. But they couldn’t wait back here for all of them to see. He knew that they needed to deal with this as quickly as possible, and use surprise to their advantage for as long as they could. “I’ll stay back, I’ll be careful—”

“ _ No, _ ” Tony told him. He paused for a moment, likely trying to buy as much time as was safe for them so Rhodey had time to come. 

He turned away and flew into the air, speeding over to the people who all looked up to find Iron Man shooting out at them. Peter watched as Tony stretched his hand out to stun as many of them as possible before their reaction times could tell them to put their weapons up in his direction. He moved like he had never known anything in the world but fighting bad guys, offensively and ready to swiftly switch to the defensive as he waited for Rhodey to break through to them and help him fight the people off.

It seemed like they were joining together against Tony now, two rings of criminals banding back together against the Avenger. Peter watched, frozen, afraid of going in and angering Tony enough that he took his suit away again, but also afraid of Tony’s ground slipping out from underneath him. Rhodey would be there in a minute. Tony already told Rhodey he needed to come. Rhodey would be there in a minute. 

But they started firing back, blasts of light against blasts of light, and Peter watched from afar and remembered the feeling that he had in his chest the night with the hostage, when he turned away from Tony. He didn’t want to see him get hurt any more than he had wanted to get hurt that night. 

He moved closer, ready to just web people up from a distance, to pull their weapons out of their hands so more of them would be without the ability to shoot back at the man flying in the sky, trying to incapacitate them singlehandedly. 

He knew that Tony was going to yell at him, and he knew that he was going to be grounded by May and superhero-grounded by Tony, but that didn’t matter if he was able to help. 

Once he was close enough, he sent out a web grenade at them, and then immediately sent out a regular web to try to pull a weapon away. 

_ Come on, Rhodey. Come on, Rhodey.  _

Attention turned to him—he had trapped a guy in his webbing, and tugged a gun away from another, and Tony was still managing to hold his own for the moment. It seemed like they could do this, especially once Rhodey arrived. Peter helped to web more up, avoiding anything sent his way from the distance he kept himself, and Tony continued to stun the others. 

And then he sagged out of the sky with a shot aimed at his chest. 

He collapsed on the ground, having not been very far up, but Peter could see from there the damage that the weapon had done to his armor. He could see how vulnerable and helpless Tony was. 

Peter was struggling, webbing and looking at all of the people who were now turned to him with Tony injured, or who were looking to finish him off as he desperately tried to keep stunning them. He felt his heart thumping away from his chest and his head was screaming so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else. The noise finally drowned out everything else he could pick up with his advanced senses, until all he heard was a screech, and everything felt twisted on its side a little bit.

He couldn’t do this. He was shaking and he wasn’t thinking and Karen was telling him something— _ something _ —“Peter, you’re panicking”—“Peter, you need to focus”—“ _ Get out of the way, kid! _ ” Rhodey shouted over the din of Karen’s voice and horrible ringing that seemed to overwhelm him.

He moved as Rhodey brought another down in front of him. Peter realized he had gotten much closer when Tony fell, that he had gravitated toward his mentor, who was still on the ground. He didn’t know how Rhodey was able to do this. His voice seemed worried, but not like the world was ending like it felt like to him.

Peter snapped back into it, his hands still shaking and his requests to Karen stuttering and scared, but he was able to help Rhodey, slinging his webs out at those still fighting with them, until there were only a few left—who couldn’t fight against two superheroes. Peter ran over to Tony as Rhodey finished the last of them off.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Peter whispered, a run-on of no’s until the word felt foreign in his mouth. Someone else had shot at him while Rhodey and Peter were trying to fix the situation. “No, no, no, Tony, you don’t look okay.”

He was bleeding. He was bleeding. His stomach and part of his chest was exposed from the damage done to the suit, and there was blood in the area of his stomach that he could see through the machinery. The mask of his suit was open and his face was pale, sickly, not at all like what Peter knew he looked like. He thought about Uncle Ben and how his face had looked after he was shot, and immediately he felt sick to his stomach. He couldn’t sit here next to another father figure in his life and watch as the blood drained out of them. Tony would be able to do something this time. Tony would fix this.

“You did good, kid,” Tony said, his voice weak. He knew what that meant. He had watched enough damn movies in his life to know what a phrase like that, in that kind of voice—what all of that meant. And he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Maybe Tony  _ couldn’t  _ do anything about this, but Peter would. “You called me, just like you should. And I needed help—you helped me. You helped Rhodey. You’re such a good kid, Peter.”

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head as he felt something catch in his throat and tears well in his eyes. He was going to collapse, break down. He was going to fall apart. “No, no, no, Tony, we can fix this, we can get you somewhere, we can—”

“I’m sorry— I wasn’t better— I’m sorry—”

“No, Tony, no, I didn’t— the other day wasn’t—” He was about to spill anything out of his mouth that came to his head, and he didn’t care, he didn’t care, it all needed to come out, it all needed to happen because then Tony couldn’t die. “I— I was upset because people were being transphobic to me, because I’m trans, and I just didn’t want to tell you yet, but you’re not— you’ve always been the best, Tony, you’ve always been the perfect mentor, and I’ve always looked up to you and— Rhodey!” He turned around and called out to the other man, needing him to see the urgency of the situation at hand. 

“I understand—” Tony’s breaths were so short. He didn’t even seem to be fazed by what Peter had said, or maybe he just hadn’t absorbed it. “I wanted to be better— I want you to stay good—”

Rhodey was already hurrying over to them. He knelt down next to Tony. “Oh, fuck,” he breathed out, his mask opening. His breaths weren’t steady; he wasn’t calm now. Peter felt tears run down his cheeks. He couldn’t hold it in, not if Rhodey couldn’t. The suit opened up, or as much as it could with all of the issues it had, and Rhodey carefully pulled Tony out of the broken armor. He gathered him in his arms, standing up like he planned to fly him off somewhere where he could be helped. But Peter saw the blood, saw the way his torso looked, saw how pale and weak Tony was.

“No, please, Tony,” he started saying, unable to stop the litany. 

“I’m proud of you,” Tony said. He looked back up at Rhodey’s face as they lifted into the air. Peter looked up, watching as Rhodey shot them into the air. He shut his eyes tightly for a moment, begging Tony to live. When he opened his eyes, he saw Rhodey slowly coming back down to the ground, though, and watched in confusion as he landed. 

_ No.  _

Peter ran over to them, shaking harder than he thought was possible. “What’s going on?” he asked, but there was no part of him that didn’t know what had happened. 

Rhodey looked up at him with the most broken look he had ever seen. 

Tony was gone. 

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head and looking at the figure in Rhodey’s arms, seeing how close he was held to Rhodey’s chest. What was he feeling, if Peter’s heart felt like it was being torn to shreds? They were only starting to get close, but the love that Tony and Rhodey shared was something that had likely long ago become a part of them. Peter knew what a mess he was, shaking and crying and unable to move from his spot, but all he could think about was the kind of mess that Rhodey must have been, too.

Maybe it was easier to forget about the shaking and the crying and the world collapsing around him if he tried to put himself in another world, in Rhodey’s world, somewhere where he could only be an observer. Because experiencing his own, where he was yards from Tony Stark’s body, was too hard. 

“You were good today, Peter,” Rhodey said, his voice unsteady. “He really admired you.” 

He shook his head and stepped away. He didn’t want to see this anymore. He didn’t want to feel how chilly the night was, or the ache in his chest.

He turned around and fled, an he didn’t stop running until he was back home. It was so late, later than May ever let him out to patrol unless he snuck out, and at first she started to chastise him, but the moment he pulled his mask off and she saw the tears and the red face and heard how he couldn’t quite breathe through the sobs, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms tightly around him.

He didn’t remember himself running home, nor did he remember much of the fight or any of telling May what happened through his tears, but he couldn’t stop reliving the moment where he first knelt next to Tony. 

“Shhh, shhh, shhh.” May ran her fingers through his hair, and he could tell she was crying too. She always did that when he got so sad that he cried this hard. It made his shoulders shake harder. “Shhh, it’s okay.” 

…

Peter sat at Uncle Ben’s grave often as Peter Parker, finding himself in front of the tombstone, reading the words there a thousand times. He talked about his day, described the clouds in the sky, and told him about the funniest things MJ and Ned had done recently.

But he sat at Tony’s as Spider-Man, too, frequently for a long time after his death, and he told him about the old man he helped cross the street, and the bank robbery he’d halted, and the visits he had with Rhodey sometimes now. 

There was an ache in his chest for both that gradually lessened. Just as eventually he came to see Uncle Ben from their best memories, as his smiling uncle, instead of the man lying on the street, he eventually came to see Tony in his best memories too. 

 


End file.
